Robotech Masters
The Robotech Masters are a people at the end of an era. Their powerful, pan-galactic Tirolian Empire, built over millennia through guile, economic power and military force, is crumbling around them. Their once orderly society has become fractured and decadent. Civil war and violent uprisings plague their vassal worlds. Their leaders are paralyzed in internecine fighting and mired in political intrigue. Arrogance has brought them here to the steps of ruin. Arrogance, greed, and a fundamental disregard of nature has twisted their once grand ideals into something ugly, desperate, and dying. When the Tirolians first took to the stars from the cradle of their Fantoma system millennia ago, they were fueled by a spirit of discovery and the desperate need to find space and resources for their heavily overpopulated homeworld. Already an advanced society well versed in bio-medical and genetic sciences, they had eradicated diseases, extended their natural life spans and had begun a program of eugenics through cloning and restrictive laws governing natural reproduction. While their technology helped control population growth, the small planet of Tirol was still overtaxed, so their leaders, scientists, and engineers began looking to the stars for the answer. With the development of their first starships and crude interstellar drives, they saw the exploration and exploitation of space as the solution to their resource problem and immediately set out to map their star system and see what lay beyond. This began what is considered the Golden Age of the Tiro/ian Republic, a time of great expansion and change. Out among the stars the Tirolian space forces began making contact with other worlds and setting the diplomatic and economic foundation for an interstellar military and economic powerhouse. Back on Tirol in their capital city of Tiresia, the Tirolian Senate passed laws and decrees tightening population controls and giving more and more power to industrial and technological concems. A mighty military force called the Tirolian Legion was fonned during this time, made up of professional soldiers and bolstered with ranlcs of conscripts and slaves. This force was tasked with protecting Tirol and her off-world interests, and soon became a ve1y visible symbol of Tirolian power. A sociopolitical group called the Masters gradually came to prominence around this time. Always a superstitious people prone to looking for signs and portents of the future in everything, Tirolians historically attached a special cultural significance to the number three. These traditions presented an opportunity for the Masters to gain influence in Tirolian society. From their research into biology, psychology, and sociology, the Masters perfected a process of controlling their followers through the compartmentalization of all thoughts and actions. This social structure was found to be most effective among groups of triplets that were simultaneously indoctrinated. Responsibilities of gathering, analyzing, and acting on infonnation were divided up among groups of threes, being deliberated and agreed upon as a group. Rebellious thoughts of an individual would typically be suppressed by the other two members of a triumvirate, ensuring obedience as a whole. To disseminate their philosophy into Tirolian culture, a covert cultural campaign was orchestrated. Groups of three began to show up in their art and design and it became fashionable among the populace to have children cloned as batches of identical triplets. The number three began to dominate their racial psyche, and even their entire system of mathematics became base three over time. It was also during this period that Tirolian society began to see the rise and primacy of the Triumvirate, groups of three clones that were individuals but thought and acted as one. Space exploration and expansion continued for millennia. The methods of Tirolian expansion gradually changed from diplomacy based on alliance building to complete subjugation by military force and economic coercion. The Tirolians began a campaign of conquest, taking people and planets by force when they couldn't acquire them through economic manipulation and guile. Worlds that submitted willingly became Vassal Worlds, administered from Tiresia but with their own figurehead governments that were totally beholden to the Tirolians. Worlds that resisted were taken by force, their people enslaved and their planets stripped of resources and turned into polluted industrial and production centers. Political power began to split among three separate factions: scientists, warriors and politicians. The stratifying of Tirolian society took root and a caste system evolved. Under this new system, Tirolians were cloned in triplets, and from the time of their births, were segregated into castes that they would inhabit their entire lives. Eventually, the Tirolian people would be completely prohibited from natural reproduction. The business of population control was given over to the Senate and run by bio-medical scientists. Soon, the whole population would be rigidly controlled and after a few generations, the entire populace was made up of clones of the original Tirolians. It took millennia to cement their hold over a wide swath of star systems, and just as the Tirolians achieved what their leadership considered the peak of power, a singular event would take their society to even greater heights before their spectacular downfall. A lone reconnaissance ship stumbled on a primitive looking planet far out on the fringes of space. One thing that drew their interest was a massive amount of energy that seemed to suffuse the entire planet. It looked to Tirolian instruments like fusion, but on a scale far and above that which simple nuclear power could generate. Probes were sent and a lush, tropical jungle planet covered in strange, living structures was discovered. The inhabitants called themselves Invid, but the life forms were so alien and unconventional that the scientists didn't know what to make of them. Teams led by the charismatic and brilliant scientist named Zor, landed and initiated first contact with the strange and reclusive Invid. The Invid were a strange dichotomy. They were simple, peaceful organisms in a tightly structured society with limited use of technology, but with a remarkable ability to understand and evolve with their environment. It was discovered that the massive energy readings from this planet, called Optera, came from the Invid's use of an indigenous plant. Small, pale and relatively innocuous, the Invid used this strange flower that blossomed in groups of three for everything from a food source, to a religious talisman, to a power source for their population centers called hives. Upon seeing their deep and nearly mystical dependence on this plant, Zor named it the "Flower of Life." Over the next few years, the Tirolians worked closely with the Invid, trading for their knowledge of the Flower of Life and the power that they generated from it, called Protoculture. Through trade and research, the Tirolians began to develop a highly advanced branch of science they called Robotechnology. They perfected Space Fold drives, allowing them to bridge the distances between stars in seconds. Protoculture helped advance their understanding of biological sciences as well, allowing them to enhance their own fmms and genetically engineer their Legion into fearsome new Annada that would become predecessors to the giant Zentraedi. The Masters within the Tirolian leadership became obsessed with Protoculhlre and the Invid Flower of Life. They saw the flower and its three blossoms as an omen, a sign compelling them to seize this new resource exclusively for themselves and expand their domination. They took on the title Robotech Masters, and began to get to the business of galactic empire building. The Masters initially attempted to cajole and chann the Invid with trade goods and flattery. However, Zor remained the primary contact with the Invid, sharing technological knowledge and ideas with their leader, the Regess. Years passed and Zor, unaware of the Masters' ulterior motives, became ever closer to unlocking Protoculture's final secrets. Ultimately, Zor created the Protoculture Matrix, a mechanism through which the Flower of Life was processed directly into pure energy, thereby bypassing Invid involvement. By this time, Tirolian society had become increasingly dependent on Protoculture, and the development of the Matrix heralded the advent of a new era. The Masters, realizing that their goal was at hand and seeing no more use for the Invid, unleashed their Zentraedi Armada upon unsuspecting Optera. In the initial onslaught, the Masters and their Zentraedi killed uncountable numbers of the peaceful Invid. They swept in and seized the Protoculture Matrix, research data, and materials from Zor' s laboratories. Zor was whisked back to Tirol, hailed as a Hero of the Empire, and lavished with awards, titles and commendations. However, the betrayal shocked Zor, and no amount of personal gain could wipe away the injustice and destruction his people had inflicted upon the Invid. Indeed, the betrayal began a backlash from the Invid that would stretch into the centuries and engulf the entire galaxy. Over the following centuries, the Robotech Masters and the Invid have been locked in war. The Invid regressed as a society, the Regess focused on revenge and the destruction of the man she held responsible for the death of her children, Zor. Meanwhile, the overextended Tirolian Empire began to slowly unravel. The prolonged era of conflict and self-obsession took a toll on their once great society, and it slid into poverty and deprivation as most usable resources were diverted to the war effort. As their power contracted, slave and vassal worlds began to rebel and secede. Uprisings rocked the Empire. Tirolian society fractured along social and political lines. Even their control of their mighty Armada became strained as the Zentraedi reveled in their existence solely for war itself. Zor was disgusted with his superiors and their manipulation of both him and the Invid, but on Tirol the Masters were able to keep him in check and control his agitation against the entrenched power structure. Civil war erupted on Tirol and then Zor delivered what could be considered the final blow against an already flagging Empire. Under the guise of finding a suitable new world to seed with the Flower of Life, Zor packed the remaining operational Protoculture Matrix onto a warship, and embarked into an uncharted region of deep space with a hand-picked crew of loyal Zentraedi and Tirolians. During a heated battle with Invid forces, Zor was mortally wounded right before he delivered his final betrayal. His battlefortress, and the Protoculture Matrix aboard it, disappeared into a hyperspace fold to unknown coordinates. In a fit of desperation, the Masters had his remains returned to Tirol in a futile attempt to recover fragments of knowledge of the Protoculture Matrix from his deceased brain. His genetic code was painstakingly preserved as the Masters began the process of producing clones with the goal of resurrecting their ideological foe and the memories locked inside him. The Masters immediately dispatched the Zentraedi High Lord Dolza and his massive Armada to retrieve the spaceship with the last Protoculture Matrix but the search would take years. ' Without access to Protoculture production, energy supplies began to dwindle and the mighty Tirolian war machine began to grind to a halt. The Empire lost more and more ground as they were unable or unwilling to defend their vassal worlds. Their clone populace became uncontrollable and their genetic stocks began to become corrupted. Eventually, even their hidden reserves of Protoculture became corrupted and unusable due to an infestation of the Invid Flower of Life. After decades of decline, Dolza had not returned with Zor's ship, and the Robotech Masters had stared at the end of their Empire and all they had built. In desperation they gathered the last of their Motherships and used what little Protoculture they had left to clone strains of uncorrupt "True" Tirolians for colonization. With their pure clones and desperately low Protoculture reserves, the Masters' fleet set out to the last known coordinates of Dolza's fleet in search of their missing fleet and the stolen Protoculture Matrix. They left behind war ravaged Tirol and the smoking remains of their Empire, abandoning what remained of their fleets and bases to be overrun by the vengeful and ravenous Invid. They took to the stars like they had millennia before, but this time for their very survival. Copyright - Palladium Books